


Thieves and Engineers

by Bluefall



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2018-11-13 05:32:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11178084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluefall/pseuds/Bluefall
Summary: Sometimes, the less two people appear to have in common, the more they have to offer each other.





	Thieves and Engineers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://baxaronn.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://baxaronn.livejournal.com/)**baxaronn** for the Mass Effect LJ 2012 Secret Santa. I was asked for femslash and delivered pre-slash character study. This is why I stopped taking prompts.

Kasumi knew three things about Tali'Zorah before they first met. One, she had been at Shepard's side at the Battle of the Citadel. Two, she was an excellent engineer by quarian standards, meaning she was superlative by anyone else's. Three, she was surprisingly young for either achievement - the same age as Kasumi, in fact.

The first thing she learned about Tali'Zorah when they did meet was that she didn't like thieves.

"Have I offended?" Kasumi asked innocently, after Shepard introduced them, gave a cautionary word about getting along to Tali in response to her snide hello, and left them to their own devices in the starboard lounge.

"You steal," Tali said flatly. " _My_ people resort to theft because they're desperate, because no one will hire them or help them or give them a second glance, and we're treated like pariahs for it. _You_ steal because, what, it's fun? And it got you a job with Shepard."

Garrus, who'd been playing a board game of some kind with Tali when Kasumi and Shepard had walked in, gave an amused chuckle. "To be fair, being a convict, terrorist, or war criminal also seems to be a good way to get a job with Shepard these days, so it's not the mark of virtue that it used to be."

"If it helps," Kasumi said cheerfully, "I have nothing but respect for the quarian people, thieves and law-abiding alike."

Tali's expression was invisible behind her mask, but Kasumi still got the distinct impression that it didn't help at all.

-)(-

She'd never been on a ship long-term before, and it took a few weeks, but eventually Kasumi settled in and found herself rather enjoying it. She was called to do more fighting in the course of a single week than she'd had to in her entire life prior, of course, but it was worth it for the chance to stand on Illium one day and Omega the next, to wake up never knowing if she'd be walking through a junkpile or a jungle by noon. To be challenged to break Collector security and sneak past Reaper tech and outhack geth. A suicide mission, Jacob had called it one day during dinner, and Jack had scoffed and said no, this was just actual _living_ , dangerous and unpredictable and real.

Minus the obligatory insults, Kasumi had to agree. She'd never stood still or played it safe, never wanted to; now that she thought about it, living in a moving object seemed like the natural next step.

-)(-

The sixth or seventh ground mission Kasumi went on turned into a tense fight with Eclipse mercs over the planetary shield they had come to repair. A particularly lucky salarian mercenary even managed to get the drop on Shepard, though unfortunately for him Kasumi had gotten the drop on him first.

"You saved her," Tali said after, lingering a moment in the cargo bay while the rest of the team clambered out of the Kodiak and into the elevator. Her head was cocked sideways slightly; Kasumi had gotten pretty familiar with Tali's body language but she couldn't quite read the meaning in that tilt.

"You mean Shepard?" she eventually asked, when she finally figured out what Tali was probably talking about.

Tali gave a short nod, and said, "Thank you."

Kasumi smiled and started to shrug it off, but the quarian had already turned to join the others in heading up.

-)(-

Kasumi wasn't sure if it was Shepard or Tali who eventually decided that she should be put to work beyond ground missions, so she had no one to either thank or curse when she found herself assigned to engineering's AI department. Someone had to keep EDI running smoothly, and while the ship's computer trusted Tali to do so perfectly well, Tali herself would apparently rather she didn't. Kasumi's expertise was mostly in info-gathering and security systems, but she was decent at networks and EDI understood her own programming well enough to help her through the rest, and thus Kasumi found herself abruptly an integral part of the engineering staff.

It wasn't that bad, though, once she got past the whole chain-of-command thing. Nobody expected her to wear a uniform or start saluting, and being EDI's personal physician was a whole new fascinating challenge, so mostly it was just a matter of adjusting to the schedule and giving up her Saturdays to play poker with Tali and Gabby and Ken. Tali still grumbled at her about being a thief when Kasumi cleaned them all out, of course, but nowadays she said it mostly with affection, and if that was the cost, Kasumi found she didn't mind being part of the team.

-)(-

"You know what your problem is?" said Tali, with the careful enunciation of the very drunk.

"Not enough brandy," said Kasumi.

"Yes!" exclaimed Tali, then corrected immediately, "No! I mean. Your problem is you don't like people."

Kasumi clapped her tumbler down on the bar with great force at this uncalled-for slander. "I love people!"

"Nooo," Tali said, shaking her head. "You treat people like - like - like your books," she settled on, waving a hand toward Kasumi's collection. "You love your books. But they're still books. You don't want them damaged but you don't need them. You know all their secrets, all their stories, but you don't tell them yours. If you had to run you'd just leave them behind without a second thought and find new ones."

"There's no point -" Kasumi tossed back her brandy, then held up a finger to emphasize her argument, and continued with sincere intent to inform, "There's no point in getting invested in something you're only going to lose."

"Loss is all the _more_ reason for people," said Tali, stabbing her own finger right back. "When you lose someone, who helps you? Who remembers them with you? Your Keiji guy. If you let us be your people, we could."

Kasumi squinted at her and worked her way through that statement until it made sense. "None of you knew Keiji," she finally objected.

"We could," said Tali. "If you told us about him."

Kasumi felt understanding dawn. "Like you told us about your dad."

She immediately regretted it as Tali slumped down against the bar. "Like my bosh'tet father, yes."

"I think _you_ need more brandy," Kasumi said, and passed her another bottle.

-)(-

Not too long after the debacle with Morinth, Shepard stopped by, as she was wont to do, making light conversation and milking Kasumi for crew gossip and asking questions about the Hock heist and how the planning was going and what her part in it would be. Kasumi caught her studying the paintings on the wall - one specific painting, rather - and, on a whim, actually told her about it. Not the critical reviews, the price tag, the complexity involved in taking it without damaging it, but the _story_ ; meeting Keiji, dancing through the city after each other and then eventually dancing _with_ each other and never going back.

It tasted odd to talk about him openly, but there was something warm in it, too, something comforting in the way Shepard chuckled at Kasumi's sheepish blushing and smiled at the wistfulness in her voice. For once she was thinking about Keiji and it was something other than just hurt.

A week later when she dropped by life support for a chat, she told Thane about her parents, a little, about growing up rich and bored and lonely with her painting and her books and a whole lot of silence, and it felt a little less odd that time, and no less quietly warm.

And by the time she found herself a month or so later telling Tali just about anything that occurred to them to talk about, from their first lessons in coding to Kasumi's single greatest theft (Tali was first impressed at her daring, then critical at how much safer Kasumi could have been if she'd just bypassed the security system a little differently), it didn't feel odd at all.

-)(-

The first thing Kasumi did after coming back from Bekenstein was take a long shower. The second was to dig into a quiet corner of engineering and start hacking through Miranda's most recent attempts at firewalling the Normandy's spy cameras, and that was where Tali found her.

"You'd have to talk to Shep," said Kasumi, when Tali asked if she could see the greybox, her earnest desire to be friendly and supportive briefly overridden by the enticement of new technology. "I don't know where it is. Actually I don't even know if it still exists."

"You didn't keep it? But I thought the whole point was to get it back, to have Keiji's memories."

Kasumi folded her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "It was, but... he was right, what he found was too dangerous. Secrets about the Alliance, about Reapers - that's Shep's thing, not mine. I just figured it made the most sense to let her figure out what to do with it."

Tali didn't press her, didn't make her admit that maybe she'd realized it was time to finally move on. That Tali had been right and she needed to be part of the world, part of this crew, instead of clinging desperately to a dead man's shadow in the privacy of her own skull. That she couldn't build the rest of her life around what was left of him, even if she couldn't quite bring herself to destroy it, either.

It was sort of nice, actually. Not saying it, not because she wanted to keep it to herself, but because Tali already knew.

Tali leaned her shoulder into Kasumi's, a little. "Good," she said, soft but sincere, maybe even a little proud, and that was nice too.


End file.
